The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by their inclusion in this section.
Determining position, speed, and acceleration of objects can be performed using electro-mechanical systems. For example, bicycles and cars have mechanical or electronic speedometers with sensor components that measure the time it takes for each revolution of a wheel or a driveshaft. These sensor components generally use two pieces of equipment, a magnetic device mounted on the wheel or driveshaft and a sensor component mounted at a fixed location, which is configured to detect revolutions by detecting each time the magnetic device passes the sensor. Then the number of revolutions per unit of time is used to calculate speed and acceleration with respect to the wheel or driveshaft where the magnetic device is mounted. Other examples of speedometers may use sensor components that include a specially designed pattern that is either painted or affixed to the wheel or other rotating object in conjunction with an optical sensor component configured to identify when the pattern passes by the sensor to measure the number of revolutions within a period.
However, these techniques generally require multiple sensor components to be positioned and configured to work together to calculate velocity, acceleration, and position. Configuring and positioning multiple sensor components requires significant time and effort to set up and calibrate.